About a year ago, a retired school teacher and amateur astronomer in England sighted an object in the sky traveling toward Earth. He immediatley contacted Brian Marsden, director of the Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams located near the Quad, and within hours, thousands of astronomers across the globe had received descriptions of the sighting.

Marsden had received reports of a similar sighting from other sources and determined that they were the same object. Astronomers in California photographed the region of suspicion, and, shortly after, they confirmed that the object was a comet--one which had come closer to Earth than any other comet in the past 200 years.

The astronomer describes the incident as one of high drama and tension: "Once the press heard about it, we had over 1000 calls."

Such adventures, however, are par for the course for Marsden, who for 16 years has been responsible for the world-wide alert of professional and amatcur astronomers about unusual astronomical occurrences.

As nead of the Bureau of Astromomical Telegrams, he runs a network that zips word of the latest astronomical discoveries over telegraph wires to stations around the world. The information-including the time of the citing and its specific celestial location-gets to astronomers within moments, in plenty of time for observers to catch a nova while it is still brightening or view a new found comet before it disappears.

Part of the joint Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics since 1963, the Bureau is internationally recognized as the first source of information on all types of astronomical observations, whether amateur or professional.

"When something important I sighted you just can't sit back and twiddle your thumbs. Someone has to scramble to notify others," says Profesor of Astronomy Jonathan E. Grindlay, explaining that fast and accurate notification is crucial to properly identify heavenly bodies.

Besides being one of the most frequently quoted astronomers, Marsden has accumulated a wealth of interesting, on the job experiences.

For example, he played a key role in the verification of the planet Uranus's rings. While it has long been known that a ring of material encircles Saturn, scientists only speculated that Uranus has its own set of rings. In 1977, MIT astronomer James Elliot, working in the Indian Ocean, observed the planet as it passed in front of a star. The star suddenly grew dim then bright five consecutive times-concrete evidence of rings.

Elliot, immediately phoned Marsden, who then calculated that a one kilometer gap separated each ring. He also made preliminery findings on the content of the rings. From there it was just a matter of hours before researchers all over the world received news of the discovery through Marsden's telegram network.

Since that time, a number of studies have been done on the rings, and today there is even speculation that Neptune has rings.

Transient Tales

Marsden's system, however, is most useful in handling transient phenomena-short-lived astronomical happenings.

The way the Bureau works is quite simple: when someone sights an unusual occurance-most commonly an asteriod, nova, supernova or comet-he contacts Marsden, who then performs some preliminary calculations to verify the accuracy of the report. He then sends out a telegram from the telex machine located in his office to the service's 800 subscribers.

"To get the information in weeks or months would be useless," says Norbert H. Bartel, a research associate in the Harvard College Observatory, who studies supernovae-extremely shortlived phenomena.